A policy manual for transactions across mobile financial services (MFSs) and banks is now in place to enable instant money flow through digital platform Binimoy.
Bangladesh Bank (BB) launches the Binimoy operating rules on Tuesday -- nearly two years after the government launched the interoperable digital transaction platform.
Binimoy is an interoperable transaction-processing-and-settlement system for digital transactions. Participants include individuals, businesses, government entities and financial institutions (FIs).
Under the rules guiding the financial technology, a user must register a Virtual ID (identity) in Binimoy in order to make a transaction. A virtual ID has a similar format as an email.
As per the rules of procedure a Binimoy user can have only one virtual ID. Multiple accounts-- belonging to the same or different FIs--can be linked to a single virtual ID.
"Use of virtual ID ensures privacy by not exposing personal information such as NID, phone number or account information. Exposure of such vital personal information may lead to crimes such as identity theft, cyber-bullying, fraud, extortion etc.
The receiver of funds only needs to indicate his Virtual ID to the sender," says the code of Binimoy rules.
It mentions two types of financial institutions may operate in the Binimoy network. They are direct participants who have a settlement account with BB and indirect participants (MFS, PSPs (payment service providers) who do not have a settlement account with the central bank.
Regarding the transaction types, the operating rules spell out that Direct Pay is the basic building block of Binimoy transactions.
In a Direct-Pay transaction, a sender transfers funds into a receiver using the receivers Virtual ID. The sender needs to input his Binimoy PIN in order to execute the transaction.
Request to Pay (RTP) is another transaction type offered under Binimoy. When a user initiates an RTP request, a notification is sent to the intended RTP receiver. The RTP receiver may do one of 3 things-- accept the request, deny the request or ignore the request.
If the RTP receiver accepts the RTP request, then a Direct-Pay transaction is initiated. If the RTP receiver rejects the request, then a notification is sent to the RTP sender--no fund transfer takes place.
If the RTP receiver ignores the RTP request, the request is put in pending state until the request expires.
A government or business entity may distribute salaries to its employees via the Binimoy portal. Binimoy validates each fund- recipient with their respective FIs.
Bulk-fund-transfer instructions are sent to appropriate FIs to credit individual accounts, it said about the digital-finance operations.
The government launched the Binimoy platform on November 22, 2022 to facilitate money transactions across MFS, banks and payment- service providers.
